Wednesday, November 7, 2007

To paraphrase its creator Enrico Casarosa, SketchCrawl is simply "a day-long drawing marathon" - a sort of intense visual record-keeping of the happenings in one day.When I was back in Toronto, seeing Enrico's painted drawings of palm trees, exotic tea gardens and hidden public staircases felt magical and foreign. And the idea of so many people invading the streets with their pens and sketchbooks kind of made me chuckle. Is there anything more paradoxical than a small army of artists?Anyway, I'm here now and I live on a boulevard lined with palm trees, I've enjoyed the Golden Gate gardens and I've climbed up, UP, UP! the Filbert steps. Man!Last Sunday was the sixteenth Sketchcrawl - my third - and for me at least it was very much a crawl. So much so that I only did one drawing! But to be fair, I spent a lot of time talking to James and Pat, and hanging out with Emma and Erin.Here's the drawing and its painted "adaptation". I did some preliminaries in Photoshop, and I painted the final in gouache, to produce VERY different results.

I was at the same sketchcrawl. Love this drawing and the painting. The colors and your handling of the crowd are fantastic. Glad to have found your blog!

It's funny, I've been such a fan of Emma Coats and James's work, and then I see Emma and crew in San Francisco and am scared to open my mouth to talk to them. It comes down to that moment when you have to open your sketchbook to this new group of people and say, "Here's where I'm at. This is what I can do. This is who I am." And you're so afraid of what great artists will think of your stuff.

You forget about how fun it is to see what everyone is working on and meet new people.

I've gotta shed that fear for Sketchcrawl 17. Anyway, sorry for the rant. Look forward to meeting EVERYONE at the next crawl and actually sharing work with everyone else.

I think what matters is having manageable goals and constantly re-evaluating how you go about achieving them.Persistence and honesty in work should be your only concerns.It may not be pretty sometimes - in fact improvement seldom is - but working at those goals is 80% of the battle. The rest is just... PR! Bring some cookies - and there you have it! :)

D

P.S. The most accomplished people, in any field, constantly question their own way of thinking. In fact, I wouldn't trust anyone who doesn't!

ABOUT ME

I'm a Bulgarian-born, Canadian-raised artist, currently working as a Character Art Director at Pixar. I've contributed to Toy Story 3, Newt, Day and Night, La Luna, Monsters University and now something new.
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Copyright Daniela Strijleva 2007-2012.